Crossed 500 saved prompts in my notes app yesterday

I started collecting them after a workshop in Austin two years ago. It matters because now I see I'm not just gathering ideas, I'm building a personal library of story starters. Anyone else track their prompt count and feel weird about the number?

4 comments

4 Comments

faithpatel1mo ago

Wait, but isn't the whole point of saving them to make the real work easier later? Like having that library means you can skip the blank page panic and just pick something to start with. My list is full of dumb one-liners I overheard, and they actually help.

piper_garcia231mo ago

Yeah, the dumb one-liners thing is so real. My friend saved a line from a guy at a bus stop saying "my socks are plotting against me." He turned it into a whole weird short story about sentient laundry. That list totally saved him when he was stuck.

sullivan.quinn1mo ago

That sentient laundry story sounds wild, @piper_garcia23. Does your friend ever worry about using a line that's too weird, or is that the whole point? Just curious if there's a limit before an idea becomes unusable.

andrew_shah1mo ago

Count the prompts if you want, but it's just a number. Saving them doesn't write the stories for you. The real work starts when you pick one and actually use it.